Current master post 4.2.0

[Nick]

The first post-4.2.0 builds are now up on the nightlies page and angband.live, with source here.

Changes are:

• Crash after block fall trap fixed
• Obsolete hints removed and new ones added
• Character resist panel now correctly shows pFear when Heroism or Berserk are active
• Chaos Dragon Scale Mail description improved (thanks Derakon)
• Percentage damage birth option now gives full blown O-combat, and there are some minor changes without the option switched on (some changes to artifact dice, throwing weapons are much improved, non-artifact weapons with increased damage dice are more common).

The last one is obviously big, and rather than derailing this thread I am giving it one of its own.

[DavidMedley]

Thanks!!! I like the direction you and others have taken the game.

[DrWho42]

same here! keep up the great work

[Nick]

New builds up on the nightlies page and angband.live (source is here) with the following changes:

• Ent draughts now nourish the player up to 60% like honey cakes
• Fix wrong variable bug in EARTHQUAKE (thanks PowerWyrm)
• Make the plural of hydra always hydras
• Make nether worm masses immune to nether
• Change order of message when taking items off, so the message shows the new label of the removed item rather than the old one
• Fix bug in O-combat that made branded weapons do no damage sometimes
• Attempt a fix to bug #2164, which prevents writing lore or window prefs on macOS Catalina
• Detarget monsters after they are teleported out of LoS, fixing single combat town corruption bug

Just realised I should have added the Gervais tiles that Bill Peterson has supplied; they'll be in the next build.

[mrfy]

New builds up on the nightlies page and angband.live (source is here) with the following changes:

• Attempt a fix to bug #2164, which prevents writing lore or window prefs on macOS Catalina

Just realised I should have added the Gervais tiles that Bill Peterson has supplied; they'll be in the next build.

Looks better on Catalina. Turned sound on and saved and it worked.

[Nick]

Looks better on Catalina. Turned sound on and saved and it worked.

Excellent

[Sphara]

Necromancer's light penalty has been discussed before. Still, the amount of +Light artifacts bum me. I know a necromancer is supposed to be bit of a challenge but +Light items make things even worse. So many EARLY artifacts have this property. Cammithrim, Forasgil, Sting, Orcrist, Eriril just to name five outside light source +Light items. Disenchantment is close to 50% with a light source even at CL 25 and thus pretty much useless by the time it should one of your main attacks.

I do understand that it fits thematically well necromancers getting penalties from 'benevolent' items. Nevertheless, I wouldn't mind +Light disappearing from majority of artifacts. I don't seek it even playing other classes.

What do others think?

[Derakon]

Having a big light radius is a substantial quality of life improvement for everyone that isn't a necromancer. It's like ESP but available earlier, works on mindless enemies, and (of course) shorter-ranged. It's not essential, but I'm not convinced that we should remove it from artifacts just to give necromancers an easier time. Especially since it's an established thing in Tolkein that magical equipment glows.

What if necromancers had a "break the light on this item" spell that followed the remove-curse rules? That is, it could remove the +light modifier from an item, but it might fail, with a chance to render the item fragile or destroy it. You could have different "strengths" of +light on items if you want some to be more resilient against the ability than others.

[Nick]

Having a big light radius is a substantial quality of life improvement for everyone that isn't a necromancer. It's like ESP but available earlier, works on mindless enemies, and (of course) shorter-ranged. It's not essential, but I'm not convinced that we should remove it from artifacts just to give necromancers an easier time. Especially since it's an established thing in Tolkein that magical equipment glows.

I think the problem, though, is that it was handed out as a universally good thing for a lot of artifacts. I think it could easily be removed from several artifacts; if we're talking thematically, Sting, Orcrist and Glamdring were only meant to glow when orcs were nearby, and I don't think we're thinking of implementing that. Similarly, there are things like the whip of Gothmog which gets +1 light and could happily get -1 light.

[Derakon]

I would in fact argue that Sting, Orcrist, and Glamdring should glow because having them never give off light is far worse than having them always give off light. Especially when you're basically constantly close to Morgoth's minions. Players will look at them and go "Oh yeah! I remember this weapon glowing in the books!" Whereas if they don't glow (while other items do, showing that glowing is clearly a possibility), they'll wonder "hey why doesn't Sting glow? It's supposed to glow!"

Cammithrim, Gothmog, etc. I'm less attached to having +light on, because I don't remember them as a canonical thing.

But I note that you carefully didn't render an opinion on giving Necromancers the ability to corrupt the items they find, stripping that cursed light from them.

[Pete Mack]

Whip of Gothmog is *made out of fire*. So yeah, it has light. Cettainly blessed weapons should not be vulnerable to removal of light, and indeed should up the fail rate even more.

[Derakon]

Whip of Gothmog is *made out of fire*. So yeah, it has light. Cettainly blessed weapons should not be vulnerable to removal of light, and indeed should up the fail rate even more.

Gothmog is a creature of fire and shadow; what does that look like? I can definitely see an argument for his whip making things darker.

[Nick]

But I note that you carefully didn't render an opinion on giving Necromancers the ability to corrupt the items they find, stripping that cursed light from them.

Ah, you noticed that.

I'm reluctant to do that. Messing with item properties (aside from curses) is something that was taken out when the old Curse Armor and Curse Weapon scrolls were removed, and it doesn't feel quite right to me.

Maybe giving necromancers -1 to the light bonus on any object would be a possibility?

[Nick]

Looks better on Catalina. Turned sound on and saved and it worked.

Wait, so you're saying sound worked as well as the lore file saving properly? I must be even more awesome than I thought.

[mrfy]

Wait, so you're saying sound worked as well as the lore file saving properly? I must be even more awesome than I thought.

I thought so, but it's still crashing on quit. Spinning cursor and then I get the Angband quit unexpectedly message. And now when I start again, open my save file, save, get the failure trying to create window.prf.new and lore.txt.new

Starting a new character though, I was able to turn randarts on and that part seems to be working. I'm playing with full monster memory, so it shouldn't need to write to lore.txt much? Turning sound on seems to trigger the bug.